It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . . in the living room

This year, we decided to go back to the simplicity of the Christmases of my childhood. Thus, many of our Christmas "treasures" remained on the shelves in the basement.

Simple fresh greens put around our mantle display. A couple of large pine cones added here and there.
With the hurricane as inspiration and three freshly polished silver trays, I got two iron deer up from the basement shelves and added fresh greens and pine cones for the coffee table. Not so much a Christmas centerpiece as a winter one.

Besides fresh greens, there are holly branches that I put in some of the vases here and there around the house. A bit of a touch of Christmas to this corner of the living room.

Christmas this year at Linderhof is subtle and I like it -- there is Christmas but it doesn't scream Christmas. There were far fewer trips up and down the basement steps with bins and the Christmas tree is the centerpiece of our decorations this year.

In my childhood, the greens and the poinsettia for the dining room centerpiece were put in place early in December and the house remained so until mid December when the fresh tree was bought, furniture moved and it was placed in the front room window. Decorations of big colored bulbs, lots of ornaments (mostly shiny brite ones) and real metal tinsel. We always thought it was the most beautiful tree.

We did ours a bit backward with the tree up early and the greens and poinsettias later.

Linderhof is ready for the Christmas season.